Just In on Kyodo News: Over 80,000 Public Comments on Government Policy on Reliance on Nuclear Energy in 2030, Government Announced

It is just a headline at Kyodo News for now.

This is unprecedented in Japan. I've never seen such a high number of public comments on any issue. People are taking the system of public comments on government policies literally and seriously and flooded the government with more than 80,000 comments (letters, faxes, email messages, online forms) stating what they think of the three choices offered by the Noda administration on the future reliance on nuclear energy in 2030. The deadline to submit the comments were midnight on Sunday August 12, and as of August 11 the number was still 50,000.

The public comment system is meant to serve as a "token" democracy at best by soliciting comments from citizens on government policies.

The three choices of nuclear reliance were 30% (same as pre-Fukushima reliance on nuclear energy), 15%, or 0% of electricity to be generated by the nuclear power plants by 2030. It is pretty clear where the administration wanted to steer the opinions - 15%. Big mistake. Opinion polls indicate 0% is the most popular choice.

All those token (or sham) town hall meetings in select cities throughout Japan by the government (Goshi Hosono, as the minister in charge of nuclear accident, I think) but actually planned and carried out by one of the largest PR agencies in Japan (Hakuhodo) for the sum of 50,000,000 yen (US$640,000) did nothing to appease net citizens.

The government bureaucrats and experts with close ties to the government have said in the past that while the government may not pay any attention to the protests on the streets, it does care about the public comments which by law they cannot easily ignore. We'll see what the tenor of the comments are, soon enough.

Tweet